The Sunday News
Dumisani Sibanda, Sunday News Correspondent
ON Wednesday, the drum beat will reverberate across Africa, loudest perhaps in Zimbabwe and other five states including Ghana, as Africa Day is commemorated.
Zimbabwe and Ghana- which is the first country South of the Sahara to attain independence from colonial rule on 6 March 1957- are among the six countries that have had the wisdom to set aside Africa Day as a national holiday.
Otherwise the other 48 countries who are part of the African Union which was launched in 2002 in South Africa as a successor of the Organisation of African Unity formed on 25 May 1963, just commemorate the event on 25 May without declaring it a holiday.
For Zimbabwe, the event will coincide with the Million- Man March being organised by the Zanu-PF Youth League in solidarity with the ruling party leader President Mugabe who is the immediate past Chairperson of the African Union.
President Mugabe, is a revered Pan-Africanist for his ideals for African Unity and his practical demonstration against neo-colonialism by leading the land reform programme in Zimbabwe which saw the resource being re-distributed from a few whites to the landless black majority.
Recently while addressing a rally in Filabusi, the Zanu-PF Deputy Secretary, Cde Kudzinai Chipanga, announced that the Million Men March in solidarity with President Mugabe would take place on Africa Day.
He said this was apt because the march would celebrate President Mugabe’s works especially being a “true Pan-Africanist”.
A Zimbabwean war veteran who was in the forefront of the demonstrations in Matabeleland to press for the land redistribution exercise in 2000 and is a beneficiary of the programme, Cde Jabulani Petshu Sibanda, also believes it is proper to bestow President Mugabe the honour of this march on Africa Day.
“As recipients of land under the land reform programe implemented by President Mugabe, we salute our leader as a true Pan-Africanist and therefore will take part in the Million- Man March on Africa Day,” he says. “There are more than 350 000 families that benefitted from the land reform programme and we are happy that the youth who are yet to benefit from this resource thought of this march in honour of President Mugabe. The land was distributed to those who were interested in it without regard to their political affiliation. What President Mugabe did on the land was the first of its kind and he is hailed in many parts of the word for pursung the land reform programme.”
President Mugabe has also been steering forward the economic indigenisation programme that has also raised the ire of Western imperialists. As a result of his steadfast and forthright approach on the land issue and economic indigenisation programme President Mugabe has courted himself enemies in the West especially Britain and her Anglo-Saxon allies but he has not budged even after economic sanctions have been imposed on Zimbabwe.
Ironically by so doing he has endeared himself to the millions of downtrodden people of the world, like when he got a standing ovation when he told off then British Prime Minister Tony Blair who had led an onslaught on Zimbabwe for the land reform.
“Blair keep your England and I will keep my Zimbabwe,” he thundered at a summit in Durban, South Africa and the message was captured in media right across the world. It is estimated that more than $40 billion might have been lost due to the sanctions which have hurt the ordinary man most even though the imposers have tried to brand them as “targeted measures” meant to hurt President Mugabe and his lieutenants in the ruling party only.
Even his peers agree that President Mugabe -who was one of the leaders in Zimbabwe’s liberation movement alongside the late Dr Joshua Nkomo warmly referred to as Father Zimbabwe were the protagonists in the armed struggle which saw this country become independent- is a “Pan-Africanist par excellence”.
Last year, during his state visit to Zimbabwe, the President of Mali, Mr Ibrahim Boubacar Keita described President Mugabe as a “great Pan Africanist” committed to African unity.
President Mugabe who was then Chairman of the African Union had just been to Mali to witness the signing of a peace deal between Tuareg led rebels and President Keita’s government.
“All media in the country, be it radio and television, made echo of what you said that day. Thank you for being such a great Pan Africanist, a true son of Africa committed to African unity,” President Keita was quoted as saying of President Mugabe’s visit to Mali.
This has been President Mugabe’s story wherever he has gone in Africa and in other countries outside the continent which have been victims of Western imperialism.
But during the Malian President’s visit to Zimbabwe, President Mugabe also took the opportunity to warn his peers in Africa to be wary of external forces that were keen to see countries in the continent always at each other’s throats.
“Be mindful that certain forces want Africa to be divided so that they can plunder our resources while we invest our energies in tension, strife and quarrels,” President Mugabe, the Pan-Africanist warned.
The Zimbabwean leader has also taken his Pan-African gospel to such important platforms as the United Nations Assembly where he has even questioned the existence of the undemocratic structures such as the United Nations Security Council which condemn Africa to the periphery of key decision making in the international body.
So, there is no doubt that the timing- that is the choice of Africa Day- to honour President Mugabe through the Million-Man March on the streets of the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, is correct and most befitting.
However, other countries in the continent- itself dubbed the “cradle of man-kind”- will also celebrate the day clear though that it is not yet Uhuru on the economic front as Africa is still plagued by poverty with a lot of people still surviving on less than a $1 per day.
A situation, which some Africans drunk with Western propaganda blame on Africa itself for launching the struggle against the “trilogy of enslavement, colonialism and neo-colonialism”, which of-course is well captured in the classic development book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney.
It is important to understand the genesis of Africa Day to realise how important it is which makes one wonder why it is only a national holiday in six progressive countries in the continent which naturally include Zimbabwe.
The Berlin Conference is the one which marked the Scramble for Africa by the West which led to the colonisation of the continent. However, after the Second World War, the process of de-colonising Africa began as Africans fought against colonial subjugation and a lot of countries got their independence within a space of two decades, that is from 1945 to 1965.
The colonial powers, however, stubbornly clung to other countries like Zimbabwe which only got its independence in 1980 after a protracted armed struggle and South Africa which became free from colonial rule in 1994 becoming the last African country to be independent.
However, South of the Sahara, Ghana, was the first country to be independent in March 1957 and this spurred others to resist colonialism. A year after its independence, Ghana which was led by one of Africa’s founding fathers, Kwame Nkuruma, took a quantum leap in the struggle against colonialism when it hosted the first Conference of independent African States.
Those who took part in the meeting were representatives of the governments of Egypt (then a part of the United Arab Republic), Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia and the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon).
This event was historic as it marked the first Pan-African conference to be held on African soil.
At this meeting, there was a call for the founding of Africa Freedom Day, which was dedicated to “mark each year the onward progress of the liberation movement, and to symbolise the determination of the People of Africa to free themselves from foreign domination and exploitation.”
However, five years after the milestone another meeting was held in the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa.
On 25 May 1963, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was born with thirty-two independent African states forming the continental body. At the time more than two-thirds of the continent had achieved independence, mostly from imperial European states. It was at this occasion, the birth of the OAU , that the date for commemorating Africa Freedom Day was changed from 15 April to 25 May, hence the commemoration throughout Africa marked by song and dance in the true African sense of celebrations.
It is instructive to note that although it took years in the making, the African Union, was officially launched in Durban, South Africa, in 2002 and 10 years later former Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma became the first women chair of the AU Commission (the AU’s administrative arm).
The organisation remains headquartered in Addis Ababa, although it’s legislative arm, the Pan African Parliament, is in Midrand, South Africa. When the OAU was formed the continental body was seized with facilitating the independence of African objectively and when South Africa got its independence that goal fell away with the new objective of transforming the group into an economic union hence the launch of AU coincidentally in South Africa in 2002.
This year as a new feature of the African Union, the first edition of the Africa Day for School Feeding was celebrated on 1 March which is important for Zimbabwe following the declaration of a national disaster as food shortages haunt the country following the El-Nino induced drought.
In the true African spirit of moving away from Western aid led development, the programme emphasizes “home grown school feeding” so as to achieve sustainable development.
Africa Day for School Feeding was instituted by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government during the 26th AU Summit, “in recognition of the immense value of home grown school feeding to enhancing retention and performance of children in school, and in boosting income generation and entrepreneurship in local communities”.
